Hey! I’m a pretty loud fellow when I’m travelling. Driving in a car I am often yelling at cars and different folks even though they can’t hear me. I’m the same way while riding my bicycle to the point where my partner Maggie hates it when I start spouting at mindless drivers. Well, I’m posting a link to a blog I saw that would suggest my yelling is a good idea.
http://www.thewashcycle.com/2013/10/when-people-stop-being-nice-and-start-being-real.html
Meanwhile the Dotbike internal count revealed a few things and Boston Bikes listened! They were interested in our data and although they’re not about to budge from their down town first approach they made a sincere pitch that the neighborhoods are on their radar. Faint blips, but we’re there…
What we found was that we’re slack compared to the rest of the city in terms of wearing helmets, riding correctly and including women.
Fully half the folks counted did not have helmets on. To me that’s a huge improvement though from the 70% helmetless stat we came up with through analyzing our Dotbike flickr site photos.
Almost as many folks who ride helmetless are what we term ‘Sidewalkers.’ In other words, they ride on the side walk or into the traffic on the wrong side of the road. This is a serious issue that we need to address in order to make our local riders safer.
The lack of women riders was particularly evident in areas we counted where there was little or no accomodation for bikes. The one spot we chose that incorporated two major commuter pathways into town had the highest percentage of women. The spot we chose which crassly might be termed as being in the core of the ‘hood’ revealed few if any women riding.
Some day soon we’ll take our own in depth look, but the above really covers it.
Now folks. Start yelling at those cars! After all they might have killed you. Pedal on!
